Porn Valley- This time a year ago Skeeter Kerkove was shooting a porn movie virtually every week or weekend at his house in Tujunga. This year, the house, overlooking low clouds and crisp mountains, is standing quiet – more as a monument to construction than anything else. There’s no porn activity, but there’s some kind of project going on in every room. There’s new furniture and stainless steel kitchen appliances; the living room features the kind of marbled flooring you’d see in some upscale Vegas casino. A number of picture windows have been installed allowing more sunlight and views to the backyard which is being expanded to accommodate a pool and spa. And Skeeter’s bedroom has an extra added feature. I see a nude woman sleeping face down in a pillow.

“There’s my Mexican,” Skeeter smiles. Today, Skeeter has more time on his hands than he’d probably care to have, and you get the feeling that all this remodeling and girlfriends dropping in for overnight visits are a catharthis. It’s petty obvious to the casual observer that Skeeter would like to be shooting porn again- and probably at the pace when he was one of the biggest selling names in Europe [and still is, from what I gather]. But there are other things dwelling on Skeeter’s mind right now- things that a man needs to get taken care of.

In that context, Skeeter’s man on a mission demeanor reminds me of a character in a film noir. In fact, his whole life right now resembles a script from one- the husband, the boyfriend, the cigarette smoking femme fatale, the big money, the mean streets and grim shadows not to mention the setup to make someone into a sap, a sucker, a patsy, a fall guy. Skeeter was almost made into that fall guy.

On April 27th, Skeeter was accused by his estranged wife of molesting their 2 1/2 year-old daughter. That’s the date the police report was filed. Except Skeeter was supposed to have done it on April 25th. And the two-day time lag opened other series of puzzling questions that were never answered to satisfactorily prove a thing against him. Not to mention the fact that a nurse, whose only job it is to examine children in abuse cases, failed to find a mark on his child. And besides that, Skeeter spent thousands more to find one of the top polygraph experts in the country to administer a test- win, lose or draw. Skeeter won. He was telling the truth, according to the test. He never touched his child. In fact, Skeeter gets pretty goofy around his kids and shows me pix he took of his recent supervised visit with his two youngest. They look pretty happy to me.

Even though it’s just a machine and you’re being asked simple yes or no questions, Skeeter says taking a polygraph was probably the most emotional experience he ever had in his life. He remembers crying during it. I didn’t ask Skeeter if he cried when he realized his marriage was over five years ago, but he got pretty good indications of it when word would get back how his wife, Bridgette Kerkove would lambaste him to everyone within ear shot. Kerkove who, until a few weeks ago, was actively directing for Metro has always been accusing Skeeter of stealing her money and beating her up. Just like a pimp would do.

“In the year 2000, I was sleeping with the enemy,” Skeeter says in hindsight.

Skeeter chuckles about how Exotica 2000 dropped Bridgette from its escort ranks because she spent too much time grousing to Johns about him. The agency wasn’t “comfortable” with Bridgette because customers, who didn’t want to hear her bitching and whining, complained. Skeeter also thinks it’s pretty funny that Bridgette would rat him out to the IRS particularly when she was the subject of her own investigation stemming from the years she was actively escorting.

However, the pattern of attacks and empty allegations only come from one source, says Skeeter. Bridgette’s family and their influence on their daughter.

Like the time when he and Bridgette shot a porn movie, and Bridgette’s mother turned them in for allegedly shooting with kids present. Quasarman was on camera and the cast featured Mark Davis, Alex Sanders, Mark Ashley, Ashley Blue, Melanie Jagger, Dynamite, Juliana Kincaid, Aurora Snow, Pat Myne, Shelby Myne and Jay Ashley. With all those people around, Skeeter wonders why no one happened to see kids present.

“The investigation showed that my kids were in school that day,” Skeeter notes. Undaunted, Kerkove’s mother, Debbie Felkel, a bible-thumping nurse at Kaiser Permanente, tried again with a variation on the theme, claiming the kids came downstairs to see porn being shot. That case was also dropped. In June 2003, Bridgette Kerkove filed another report- this time with the Devonshire police claiming Skeeter beat her up. What Bridgette neglected to tell anyone was that on the same day, she had a couple of cosmetic procedures done in Beverly Hills involving her lips and nose. That case was also dropped.

While her daughter was on meds for those procedures, Debbie Felkel apparently convinced Bridgette that Skeeter was under investigation with the FBI and was going to go down for various criminal activities. Bridgette was told she was in the same boat unless she dumped Skeeter there and then.

Skeeter was under no such investigation, of course; and, later, Bridgette had an extreme sense of guilt over what she had done. She called Skeeter several days later to come spend the night with her. Skeeter remembers a scenario at Sin City, with his daughter in the car, Bridgette cried and begged for his forgiveness. Bridgette supposedly called her mother to say she was going to make things right with the police. Her mother hung up on her. For the time being, the relationship between Debbie Felkel and her daughter was over. On occasions that they’d get together, there would be yelling and screaming matches.

“Debbie Felkel was of the opinion she was doing the Lord’s work,” Skeeter says. “Even if it meant sacrificing her own children or filing false police reports.”

Skeeter remembers another time where Debbie Felkel warned her pregnant daughter that by shooting porn, she’d have her unborn child taken away from her. Even Skeeter’s oldest daughter was privy to conversations in which Debbie Felkel would predict dire consequences for her daughter’s being involved with porn. After Skeeter’s youngest daughter was born, Debbie Felkel convinced her daughter that Skeeter had contacted an attorney to take the baby away. Subsequently, it was Debbie Felkel who forced the issue of Bridgette’s retirement and her separation from Skeeter.

“Not realizing,” says Skeeter, “that the Internet is a life’s sentence- your pictures and movies go up there, they never come down. The Felkels prayed for Bridgette’s soul not realizing they had the biggest anal queen in the world for a daughter.”

Although they get along now, according to Skeeter, Bridgette feared her mother and kept her whereabouts secret from her. There was a stretch over several years where Bridgette moved to five different homes- one in Alpine Village; a townhouse in Northridge; a house on Trigger St. in Chatsworth, one in Porter Ranch and another in Santa Clarita Valley. And every time it was the same story. Bridgette was unhappy with the neighborhood, or it wasn’t safe for the kids or the house was too small.

“She was never happy,” says Skeeter. On the other hand, Bridgette’s parents lived in the same home over 30 years on Summit Rose in Tujunga. Skeeter remembers Bridgette living in an attic with her sisters. He describes “dark and dingy” housing conditions and Bridgette’s sisters as overweight women with a penchant for henpecking their husbands about they way they dressed.

Even before she got into porn, Skeeter remembers Bridgette’s family harping on her- about the way she looked- either the dresses were too short or the pants were too tight; or it was the shoes she wore, or the length of her “slutty” nails. As this should come as a surprise, Skeeter says there’s documented mental illness in Bridgette’s family.

“She was abused, teased and taunted,” says Skeeter. “Bridgette would have to defend her artistic freedom to dress. Debbie Felkel likes her kids to act and dress a certain way.”

At one family gathering, Bridgette’s sister Colleen, described by Skeeter as 5 foot tall and 220 pounds, got on Bridgette’s case about being too skinny.

“This woman’s got a chocolate eclair in one hand, and a candy bar in the other- and she’s lecturing Bridgette about her weight- ‘you’re so skinny, you’re not eating, what’s wrong with you?’ The family wanted Bridgette to be in their misery.” Skeeter remembers Bridgette’s grandmother with an accent saying, “Patreeeeecia, what happent to you? You used to be so beautiful. I don’t hardly reck-cognize you any more.”

Then all hell broke loose when Bridgette decided to get into porn. Bridgette got a call from one of her sisters telling her, “I know who Bridgette Kerkove is.” And Skeeter remembers Bridgette being terrorized on the phone by her family and that the situation got particularly bad around the time she shot In Days of Whore for Tom Zupko.

“Her mother told her it was all sin money and we needed to lose it all,” Skeeter remembers. “Bridgette asked her how do we pay our bills. She was told it was okay to be poor, that there was nothing wrong with that.” In 2004 when she got pregnant with her son, Bridgette was asked if it was Skeeter’s.

“Her mother wanted her to abort the child,” says Skeeter who was shooting as many as 10 movies a month at the time. “Bridgette’s father told her you have to leave Skeeter and Bridgette made that promise. They had her so freaked out that when she gave birth, they were the only ones present. I was never told.” After her family left the hospital, Bridgette, however, called Skeeter in a happy mood to tell him that his son looked just like him.

“I didn’t go- I hung up on her,” says Skeeter. “There was too much betrayal.”

There was a momentary reconciliation, and Skeeter suspects it was due to the fact that Bridgette was tapped out for funds. She went back to work, and Skeeter, who came in handy, would baby sit the kids. But Bridgette kept telling her parents that Skeeter was out of the picture.

Her parents said it was for the best telling her, “You can’t be around Skeeter for what we’re going to do to him.”